Module 03: Reflection Assignment 3: Criminological Versus Psychological Theories of Crime

Shelley Brown: So, let’s talk about theory, specifically. So, criminology has a long history of producing a number of theories about criminal conduct. So, before we talked about psychology’s perspective and ultimately your perspective on why crime happens. What do students need to know about criminological theories of crime?

Jim Bonta: Well, there’s a couple of things about that. One is, and I tend to say, instead of criminological theory, I tend to say sociological criminology. Because in the early history of series in criminology, all the theory building was done by sociologist.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Jim Bonta: And so they come with a specific view of what accounts for behavior. And their view, in general, especially in the earlier theories, tend to be the cause of crime is rooted in the sociology, the larger community context. It’s rooted in socioeconomic status, coming from a disadvantage part of society, the lower fringes. That was their view. And the psychological approach is very different in the sense that the focus is on the individual.

Shelley Brown: Right.

Jim Bonta: The person, their feelings, their thoughts, their behaviors, whereas the sociological criminologist are interested in the social system, the social structure, and how that could affect behavior. Now, the problem, and this came through quite forcefully in earlier editions of the psychology of criminal conduct. The problem is that when you start looking at the evidence, that data. Is the root of crime in social structure? Is it because you’re poor, that you’re from a racial minority? The evidence, there is some evidence for it. But, it’s not particularly strong. And it’s not as strong as compared to psychological factors.

Shelley Brown: So, what kind of evidence?

Jim Bonta: Well, for example, the common one is socioeconomic status, the idea that if you come from the poor disadvantaged neighborhoods, you have a high likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. And this ties back to the earlier question about what makes a good theory? You know rationally, you look at this and you say, gee this kind of makes sense. You know, when you’re poor and your disadvantaged, you’re up against a wall, you’re frustrated. How are you going to get ahead? You know, and criminal behavior is one way of doing it.

But what’s missing here is the empirical evidence. So, people have done reviews of the literature. The earliest is Tittle, Villemez, and Smith. And what they found was there is a very small correlation between socioeconomic status and criminal behavior. And this really challenges criminological theories, because it’s at the root of their theories.

But the evidence, and there have been subsequent studies after that, do not find this class crime link. It’s there. But, if you’re looking at correlation coefficients, it might be 0.05.

Shelley Brown: very small

Jim Bonta: Very small

Shelley Brown: Are there any circumstances when it was ever larger, the correlation between socioeconomic status and crime?

Jim Bonta: In the original study, Tittle, Villemez, and Smith, they found a large correlation, in the very earlier studies, when it was officially reported crime.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Jim Bonta: OK? And their interpretation of that is, it’s not because you’re poor. Because a self-report criminal behavior data was consistent, no change over time. But, official? Yes. And they thought it was because of differential police court processing.

Shelley Brown: Which is a very different thing than socioeconomic status being causally related to crime, right?

Jim Bonta: Yup.

Shelley Brown: Very different

Jim Bonta: Yeah. And you know, what I want to say about sociological criminology is, there have been great contributions from them. But, their contributions are from a different level, right? For example, what we just talked about, the police, official processing kind of issue.

So, they have made contributions, important ones. But my view is their contributions are just one piece of the puzzle. They’re insufficient to explain all criminal behavior. You know, there are many, many poor people who do not engage in crime. How do you explain that?

Shelley Brown: Right. I think that’s a nice segue into your theory of criminal behavior. You said earlier, psychology, right, we’re all about the psychology of criminal conduct. It’s all about understanding individual differences.

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: So why is it that not everybody who live in the same poor [Inaudible] neighborhood, not everybody turns out to be a criminal. So, fundamentally, psychology is all about the individual differences, whereas sociology is looking more at, sort of, group characteristics like race

Jim Bonta: Group differences.

Shelley Brown: Sex, location in society, per se. So, the psychology of criminal conduct, what I do want to mention, everyone out there, Dr. Bonta has been a co-author. There is this book that you must read. It’s called The Psychology of Criminal Conduct.

It was first published in 1994?

Jim Bonta: 94.

Shelley Brown: 1994?

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: OK, 1994, and it was published by the late Dr. Andrews and Dr. Bonta. We are now, you are releasing the fifth

Jim Bonta: Sixth.

Shelley Brown: Oh, my word, the sixth edition. It’s going to be available any time now, I hear. So, you’re into the sixth edition, The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, where you have outlined many things about corrections, the theory of crime, and how to assess, and how to intervene, and it’s very empirically-driven.

What I want to talk about is, we’ve talked about the sociological perspectives on crime. So now I want to talk about your theory on crime, which in your book you call a general personality and cognitive social learning theory, general personality cognitive social learning theory of criminal conduct.

Jim Bonta: That’s a mouthful.

Shelley Brown: That’s a mouthful. Remember that though, folk. That’s an important mouthful to remember. So, what do students need to know about your theory? What’s your theory of crime?

Jim Bonta: Well, there’s a couple of big takeaways in the theory here. The first is that criminal behavior is a learned behavior. You are not born criminal.

There is nothing magical that happens in the social structure that will make you criminal, but you learn it. And you learn it according to the well-established principles of learning, whether it’s classical conditioning, operant conditioning, vicarious learning, watching models. Through that, you learn that.

That’s how we learn to ride a bicycle. That’s how we learn to play golf, not in my case. I’ve never mastered it.

But anyways, it’s the same principles. And that comes back to the generality, right? If the principles are the same in learning criminal behavior, they apply to women learning criminal behavior, they apply to sex offender learning their deviant behavior, so on, and so forth.

Now the other big takeaway, and this has implications for practice, is that you have to think of learning occurs in a social context. That’s the social learning part of this. And what are some of the major social contexts?

It’s in the areas of school and work. It’s in the areas of family, marital relations, your friendship patterns. So, in the theory, we will talk about what we call the central eight risk need factors. And the argument we make in the book, and we’ve been making this argument for many, many years is that those central eight risk need factors are general.

They apply to different offenders subgroups. We have criminal history. We have education, employment, family marital, substance abuse, so on, and so forth.

Shelley Brown: OK, so a general theory of crime. So, we know where you stand, that one size fits all? I mean, there’s a lot of, I’ll let you elaborate, but there’s a lot of debate. There’s a lot of people that write about the need for specific theories to explain sexual offending, to account for the overrepresentation of Aboriginals people in our institutions, women. So, what’s your thought on that?

Jim Bonta: Well, first of all, what’s the evidence? What is the real evidence for it? So you look at one of the derivatives of the theory, the application arm is what we call the risk need responsivity model, and when you look at, for example, the level of service instruments, a risk need assessment instrument, which is an off shoot of the risk need responsivity model, people have, for example, and you’re well aware of this, look at that risk need instrument that taps into the central eight risk need factors, and in a large meta analysis by Paula Smith and her colleagues, it works. It predicts female-offending behavior.

You look at sex offenders. There’s meta analysis on the treatment of sex offenders. If they fall the risk need responsivity principle, it works. You raise the issue of aboriginal offending. You look at some at the LS level of service studies, they seem to work with aboriginal offenders.

Now why are they overrepresented in our populations? That’s more a sociological question than a psychological question. The facts are that we know they’re more likely to be unemployed. There is more prevalence, higher prevalence, of substance abuse, family dysfunction. That’s the facts.

So, the question is why do we have this group of people in our society having more of these risk need factors.

Shelley Brown: So, they’re elevated on the Central Eight.

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: And why is the ultimate sociology, question for the sociologist.

Jim Bonta: Now I love it when, you know, critics come from whether they’re feminist scholars or from wherever because it challenges the theory. And sometimes we can learn from it. But the argument that there are specific factors, risk factors for women, or there are specific risk factors for aboriginal offenders, show me the money.

Where’s the data? And I haven’t seen it. And sex offenders is an interesting one. And here is where you can take the central the risk factors. For example, one of them is pro-criminal attitudes.

You can become more specific on how you measure pro-criminal attitudes according to the offender population. So, with sex offenders, instead of asking is it all right to steal, which they tend not to, you may ask the question is it all right to abuse this child?

Shelley Brown: So, the overarching constructs, the central eight, they apply across all groups. It’s just how we operationalize them and how they may manifest themselves differently in different populations.

Jim Bonta: Yes, and I think we need to do some tweaking with special groups. Working with female offenders, I understand where the feminist scholars are coming from. I used to work as a clinical psychologist.

Shelley Brown: That’s right.

Jim Bonta: And when I would do counseling with the female offender, it really strikes you quite loudly that they are stressed out. They’re worried about their children. They’re worried about their intimate relationships.

Female offenders, maybe I’m wrong, but they appear to be more relationship-oriented than the male offender.

Shelley Brown: And can the RNR model, so where does that fit in the risk need responsivity model?

Jim Bonta: What I was leading up to is that when you see this and this jumping out at you, it’s a natural inclination to focus your attention on those factors and forget about the central eight risk need factors. And if you’re a theory builder, you’ll look at this, it’s a fact, and people start to try to build a theory around those aspects.

And that’s fine, but show me the evidence that being depressed or highly anxious or worrying about your children, past traumas, show me the evidence that they predict, at least some way, and hopefully, as well as the other central eight risk need factors. Haven’t seen it yet. Maybe it’s coming.

Shelley Brown: There’s a few studies out there, but that’s an interview for another day. Thank you very much.

 

Read this interview and answer the following questions.

According to the interview with Dr. Bonta, in what ways do criminological theories of crime and psychological theories of crime fundamentally differ from one another?

What sorts of factors does Dr. Bonta’s theory of crime focus on and what sort of approach does he advocate for when deciding whether a theory has merit?